As recreational winter activities such as skiing and snowboarding become more and more popular, prospective customers not only demand high-performance, but also aesthetically pleasing skis and snowboards sporting extravagant drawings.
A typical ski or snowboard is a layered structure, where the different layers of material are combined to achieve the desired combination between flex and rigidity. The most common type of construction is the so-called “cap” construction, in which the outer surface of the ski or snowboard can be subdivided into two parts: the gliding surface that is in contact with the snow, and the “cap” that covers the remaining top and side surfaces of the ski or snowboard.
The cap is generally made of glass fiber impregnated with epoxy resin, and functions as an essential structural element of the ski or snowboard.
However, the cap is also coated with a printable layer displaying colorful and intricate graphics to make the ski or snowboard more esthetically pleasing to a prospective buyer.
Such printable layers are generally engineered to be printable by sublimation printing, and while such layers have good ink reception properties, they are mostly made of materials that wear, scuff and scratch easily. A preferred material used in sublimation printable layers is transparent or pigment-filled polyamide, which however is easily worn away.
Thus, such printable layers require transparent protective layers which prevent the wear of the printable layer, and which also have good scratch resistance to reduce the tarnishing of the usually high-gloss transparent protective layers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,032,139 discloses a cover sheet having two layers for use in a process for decorating an article such as a ski using a sublimation printing. The cover sheet comprises two superposed layers of plastic material, one of which is substantially transparent while the other is opaque. The opaque layer can receive a sublimable coloring agent and is applied to the article. However, such cover sheet is easily worn away, resulting in an unwanted esthetic deterioration of the coated article.
Thus, there is a need to provide for protective, printable layers that allow a reduction in the number of steps to be performed in the decorating process, and which can directly be heat-laminated to a substrate such as a ski, snowboard or skateboard to be decorated, irrespective of the degree of crosslinking of the layers, while at the same time providing the best possible scratch and scuff protection of the printed layer.